Madeleine Andronescu on the telephone:
“You make me ashamed, Mihail. I feel ashamed that you suffer and not I, that you are being humiliated and not I.”
Vişoianu (who is no sentimentalist) said something similar in the street the day before yesterday, when a group of Jews came out and passed alongside us.
“Whenever I see a Jew, I feel an urge to go up and greet him and to say: ‘Please believe me, sir, I have nothing to do with all this.’”
The tragedy is that no one has anything to do with it. Everyone disapproves and feels indignant—but at the same time everyone is a cog in the huge anti-Semitic factory that is the Romanian state, with all its offices, authorities, press, institutions, laws, and procedures. I don’t know if I should laugh when Vivi or Branişte assures me that General Mazarini3 or General Nicolescu4 is “staggered” and “disgusted” at what is happening. But whether or not they are staggered or disgusted, they and tens of thousands like them sign, endorse, and acquiesce, not only tacitly or passively but through direct participation. As for the mass of people, they are jubilant. The bloodying and mocking of Jews have been public entertainment par excellence.
I have not been able to keep up with the course of the war. I don’t even know how the battle of Smolensk ended (has it actually ended?), or how the battle of Kiev began. I have a feeling that the situation has not substantially changed. Anyway, for lack of information, the only thing that would really mean a lot would be the fall of one of the great target cities: Petrograd, Moscow, Kiev, or at least Odessa. For the moment the German communiqués are written in the same low-key style.
Wednesday, 6 August
Reporting to police headquarters has been called off for the time being. Those taken up to now are well and truly taken. The rest of us will report to the recruitment office at some time and in some order. I await clarification. Meanwhile we have an unexpected breathing space. How long will it last? A few hours? A day? Several days? At least I feel calmer.
I paid Marie Ghiolu a visit. (I rang her yesterday evening and asked her to get me an appointment with the heart specialist Dr. Iliescu.) It honestly felt like entering a showy asylum, where a whole apartment is set aside for a “high-class” madwoman. Never before has the Ghiolu house struck me as so theatrical, so unoccupied, so calculated to produce an effect. Everything looks as artificial as in a shop window—above all, the glaring excess of color. In the reception room there are huge violet-blue armchairs, with little red cushions. The dining room is a pale rose, with yellow lighting, as if from an electric lamp, filtered through a rectangular window. The upstairs lounge is red. And everywhere the colors are strong and overpowering. She herself, Marie, was wearing a long dress or wrapper in the same shrieking violet as the armchairs downstairs, and a darker blue (equally strident) turban on her head. She had never seemed so mad, and this time she did not have her old childlike ingenuousness. What Marie (and therefore her husband) thinks, believes, wants, and expects is not difficult to summarize: you just have to read Gringoire5 to find out. She is for Petain and the Germans, against the British, against the Russians, and against the Jews. If the Germans do not win, there will be a total disaster that does not bear thinking about. If the Germans do win, Romania will get back Transylvania and the Hungarians will be wiped out. Anyway, a German victory is certain. Their armies are a long way past Moscow, three or four hundred kilometers past Moscow, which has been left behind surrounded. Exactly as in a lunatic asylum, where it is forbidden to contradict the patients, I kept nodding my head in agreement.
Alice tells me something I find hard to believe (especially as I have so often seen her exaggerate the simplest facts into some cock-and-bull story). It seems that Vişoianu visited her yesterday, went down on his knees, and made a declaration of love. I can’t see Vivi at all in such a position—which is precisely why I find it so piquant. How Rosetti would enjoy it if I could tell him!
Thursday, 7 August
A day of freedom more or less (I even went to see a film!), but a freedom that could end tonight, tomorrow morning, tomorrow evening, any time at all. The Council of Ministers has adopted various provisions for labor camps and concentration camps. When these are made public, we shall know what awaits us. Anyway, I can’t believe they’ve given up the idea of interning us, either in camps or in labor detachments. Until then, each peaceful hour is a peaceful hour.
A long German communiqué, with three “reports” and a “conclusion.” It is a kind of history of last month’s operations. I read it carefully three or so times, but I still can’t work out the actual situation on the map. It says that the fighting in Smolensk has ended victoriously, but I don’t see the natural sequel to such a victory, which should obviously have been an advance on Vyazma. Nor is it altogether clear that Smolensk itself has been occupied. The account of operations in the south is even more confused. Is Kiev really encircled? Is it on the point of falling? The whole communiqué seems more geared to the requirements of public opinion than to a rigorous technical description. There is an interesting claim, asserted twice, that “a new phase of operations has begun,” and that “the German army is preparing to take the fight it began into a new sector of operations.” In the end, the fantastic figures are more colorful than interesting: 895,000 prisoners, 13,145 armored cars, 10,380 guns, 9,084 aircraft.
Sunday, 10 August
Comme les jours sont lents; comme la vie est lente!6
Sometimes, I don’t know why, you suddenly feel more sharply than before the futility, narrowness, and terrible mediocrity of this life, its gradual disintegration as in a long, protracted death. Why? For whom? For what? Until when? You sleep and eat, sleep and eat, sleep and eat. You read the morning paper, read the evening paper, then again the morning paper, again the evening paper. Everything is lost in a taste of ashes, without memories, without real, profound hopes. I think it was last Saturday or Sunday, in moments when everything seemed lost, that for some reason I looked up from the street to the sky. It brought tears to my eyes: a clear blue sky, with some weightless white clouds floating across it; a southern sky, you might say. It could have been somewhere else: in Annecy, Geneva, Lisbon, or Santa Barbara. I could have lowered my head and no longer found myself in Bucharest, in August 1941, but in a free city where I could move about freely, unknown and alive.
I have been reading quite a lot, rather mechanically, to dull my senses. The pleasure (the only one) of reading in English is that I see myself making more and more progress. I have on my desk the first volume of Taine’s History of English Literature. If nothing happens to stop me, I want to make a systematic journey from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.
Worries, regrets, melancholy thoughts. If in 1938—or, to make it simpler, in 1937 when I had the invitation to Geneva—I had left for England and remained there (which would have been possible with some effort), then how extraordinary these years of war would have been! I think I would still have been young enough to treat England as a second youth, to have lived studentlike with diligence, concentrated attention, and passion. There is a line of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s that sums up my whole life.
Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been.
A new German offensive in Ukraine seems to be making headway. I don’t have enough information to follow it on the map, but there is talk of a great outflanking movement between the Dniester, the Dnieper, and the Black Sea. Nothing much on the rest of the front.
The government is relentlessly demanding ten billion lei from the Jews. What if that much can’t be found? The threat is direct, with absolutely no beating about the bush. If it can’t be found, we could pay with our lives.
Monday, 11 August
We have again been called up for labor service, this time through an official announcement from the recruitment office. We must all report in order of age, from eighteen to fifty years. Benu’s turn comes on Wednesday, mine on Friday. This time, I don’t think there is any way out. I have taken the news quite calml
y—so far, at least.
After the Jews of Cernăuţi, those of Iasi are now obliged to wear a yellow Star of David.7 It is said that the measure will soon be extended to Bucharest and the rest of the country.
11 August. That terrible night of 11 August 1940 at Olteniţa station! It was a nightmare—and it feels as if it is not yet over.
The German communiqués of yesterday evening and this evening do not say anything new. Advances in Ukraine, but nothing specific. Elsewhere on the front—“planmässig. ”
A pleasant evening at Sandu Eliad’s,8 with Benu and Agnia Bogoslav,9 on a twelfth-floor terrace. The city is a long way off, with its miseries and infamies. But when you go back down . . .
Tuesday, 12 August
So, we won’t be going now either—not for the moment. “For the moment”—everything is “for the moment.” At the last minute they canceled yesterday’s notice to report for service. An announcement today said that “the labor call-up of Jews has been suspended for ten days,” and that new instructions will be issued after the 21st of August. I don’t know the exact reason for all this dillydallying; it could be just the good old administrative disorder. But it could also be that they have not yet decided what to do with us. Or it could be that they have decided to give us a few more days, until the subscriptions to the war loan have been arranged, so that the prospect of compulsory labor can be wielded as a constant threat and means of exerting pressure. Anyway, there will be a few more days, or maybe only hours, of relative quiet. Autant de gagné.1
Wednesday, 13 August
The German communiqués of yesterday evening and this evening are vague. “Operations are continuing successfully.” In fact, the only sector where something is probably happening is southern Ukraine. Odessa is said to be on the point of falling. Any day, any hour—quite imminently.
But I have a feeling that the war is no longer in the phase when a swift blow could transform a situation in twenty-four hours. We’ll have to wait until September to see more than we can glimpse or guess today. The Romanian press itself seems less categorical than three or four weeks ago. There has been a certain softening of tone.
The lawyer Poenaru (a Brăilan with whom I was not on good terms at school) told me that Odessa has been occupied for four days but that the Germans do not want to announce it for the time being.
Thursday, 14 August
A possible topic for my doctoral thesis (if I ever submit one): anti-Semitic legislation around the world during the Hitler period.
Friday, 15 August
This evening’s German communiqué: “The city of Odessa has been encircled by Romanian troops, and the city of Nikolaev by German and Hungarian rapid-deployment troops. To the east of the Bug, German troops have occupied the important mining region of Krivoi Rog. Operations are continuing successfully in other sectors as well.”
It feels as if time is stuck, at a standstill, no longer moving, no longer passing. Will it be like this for ever and ever? I am dead tired. I no longer have the will to read the paper, to discuss, to ask questions, to give answers.
Sunday, 17 August
Long, hot, monotonous August days which overwhelm you with sadness, weariness, and a sense of futility. No hope, nothing to look forward to. I am physically exhausted. I feel empty, desolate, mindless, embittered. What could bring me back to life? Maybe the sea, maybe the forest, maybe a few days in the mountains. I need a wave of health to wash over me. I ought to be able to go on believing in life, in my lost youth, in my vocation to live, love, and achieve something.
Two or three weeks ago, at the height of the battle of Smolensk, there was a general sense that things were speeding up. An end to the war seemed possible in the near future. Now the war is in a less dramatic phase, and peace seems more distant, more unlikely. There is no news from the front. Everything appears to be stagnating. The German action in southern Ukraine continues according to plan—“planmässig,” as the German communiqué always puts it. And the conference between Churchill and Roosevelt2 (whose note of spectacular optimism is lost on us here) is drawing up plans for 1942.
Monday, 18 August
Yesterday evening’s German communiqué announced the occupation of Nikolaev. This evening’s says that the Russian retreat from Ukraine has “speeded up” and that “major successes” have been registered in the other sectors.
A casual visit to Aderca’s. He has written—and he read out to me—a long reply to Călinescu’s Istoria. Very nice, very accurate—but how did he find the strength, the inclination, the curiosity to write it? A sign of youthful vitality. It may be that, in my profound weariness, there is something more and something worse than indifference and skepticism; perhaps there is a deficiency of life. Why do I not feel personally “aimed at” in what is said, done, or written against me? Why do I not feel a desire for revenge? Why is it that I, who used to be so jumpy and combative, am now so placid?
We had an alert last night between two and three—the first for nearly four weeks. It is said that they were bombing Buftea station. But my impression is that the Russian air raids are always aimless and ineffectual.
Thursday, 21 August
The Germans have occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine. As to the central front, they report fighting and victories to the south of Smolensk— at Gomel. The main pressure now seems to be on Leningrad to the north, where Voroshilov has issued an urgent appeal to the population.
Lunch at Alice’s with Vicky Hillard, a cavalry lieutenant, who returned yesterday from the Ukrainian front. His general view of the war is not that interesting (it’s anyway not very different from what you hear in Bucharest), but he gave a simple and precise account of detailed events. A lot about the massacre of Jews on both sides of the Dniester. Tens, hundreds, thousands of Jews were shot. He, a simple lieutenant, could have killed or ordered the killing of any number of Jews. The driver who took him to Iasi had himself shot four.
Last night, an air-raid alert at one o’clock.
Friday, 22 August
Two months since the war with the Russians began. If I leave aside the new German push in the north—it is just starting, and I don’t know how it will end—the war seems to be assuming a clearer shape. In any event, these two months represent two distinct periods. The first shows that a German blitzkrieg won’t work; the second shows that a Russian counteroffensive cannot break through either. The halting of the German advance at Smolensk was a decisive moment: it was the first time that a German offensive had been stopped. This fact made it legitimate to ask whether the Russians, after absorbing the first tremendous shock, would not be capable of taking the initiative themselves. This was more than just a question: it was an eager expectation, mingled with fear, optimism, and surprise.
Now everything has quieted down. The Germans have repeated the “tremendous shock” in the south, around Odessa-Nikolaev-Kherson, and they are repeating it in the north around Leningrad. The Russians cannot do anything other than resist and retreat. But assuming they can do that, and assuming that nothing unexpected happens, the war may go on in the same way until the first snowfall. Then it will hibernate, or move down to warmer climes, and wait for the thaw to come.
The drive toward Leningrad looks more serious than I at first thought. Only now do I see on the map the position of Novgorod, which the Germans have reached. It won’t take much more for Leningrad to be cut off from Moscow. It is true that, in the declaration he made yesterday, Voroshilov said that Leningrad had not been and never would be occupied—but Rostopchin said more or less the same about Moscow, in August 1812.
How strange—now that I think about it—seems the calm with which Hillard spoke yesterday of the murders and butchery of the Jews in Bessarabia. (Among other things, a captain in his regiment shot a young Jewish woman because she refused to sleep with him.) Only now do I remember that Hillard himself is Jewish on his father’s side—and I think to myself that he witnessed all the horrors without going mad, or indeed without being shaken to the
core.
Saturday, 23 August
A communiqué issued by the Ministry of the Interior: “By order of General Ion Antonescu, the Head of State, let it be known that if any act of sabotage should be committed by Communists, 20 Jewish Communists and 5 non-Jewish Communists will be shot.”
A communiqué from Romanian army headquarters: “On all sides we are 15 km from Odessa. Threatened by the pistols of Jewish commissars, the Russians fight on until they are wiped out.”
Yesterday evening’s German communiqué presented a new balance sheet: more than 1,250,000 prisoners, 14,000 armored cars, 15,000 tanks, 11,250 aircraft.
Uncle Avram died this morning. It is a terrible thought (which I have never completely driven from my mind) that in a way I resemble him and his fate.
Monday, 25 August
Called up again for labor. This morning’s papers had the announcement by the recruitment office. In the street, newspaper placards blazoned in huge letters: “Jews Aged 18 to 50—etc., etc.” Benu has to report the day after tomorrow; I, on Monday. That’s all I know for the moment. Will we remain in Bucharest? Or leave? For where?
This morning the Soviet and British armies entered Iran.
Nothing new on the German-Soviet front. Fighting in Odessa. The pressure in the Leningrad region seems less acute than of late.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 49